Shutdown Fullcast - 40 for 40: The 2016 Rose Bowl

Episode Date: December 31, 2016

Number 39 of 40 bowl previews, in which we may not discuss the Rose Bowl or the teams playing in it whatsoever! Actually, this one is confusingly positive, about the bowl venue and the players involved and shoot even the coaches. 2016 has been a very trying year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the 40 for 40 for the 2016 Rose Bowl. But one of us is going, and we're just going to yell at them about how awesome everything but the game and the people there will be. Jason Kirk, you are going to your first experience at the Rose Bowl, correct? That's happening, making the pilgrimage. Okay. I'm going to look at flowers, parade, sunsets, and all that. I would recommend skipping the parade, but I will tell you the thing about the Rose Bowl that really, really irritated me when I showed up for my very first one was getting up into the upper levels of the stadium, beholding the view of the San Gabriel's, and going, oh, fuck, this is exactly as beautiful as all those Big Ten people have been screaming about this entire time. They were right. Yeah, I have, I've prepared myself for, um,

for basically just becoming Jim Delaney for like half a day. It's bucolic as hell. It is. It's just, it's so perfectly like positioned. There's a proscenium and there's the staging in the back and the mountains are just like the curtain.

It's obscene. The light at dusk, you know, the way it looks on TV where you go, man, that looks like Valhalla, it doesn't even get a tenth of how good it looks in person. The grass feels awesome on your feet.

The stadium itself is, built on a human scale so the seating is low so every seat's pretty good i mean just screw that place man it's it's it's perfect i hate you know you've you've read about like if you don't feel right about something unless you're getting ornery think about UCLA fans just wasting this stadium you've read about how they don't they don't uh the grass is not grown there they truck it in from like hundreds of miles away or some shit well yeah wherever that is that place is also perfect because I took my I took my shoes off everybody like this is how everybody takes their shoes off and nobody feels the slightest bit weird about it is the thing like you'll see like people you would

not imagine to stoop to this level of like tactile pleasure will just like wander around wiggling their toes in pregame it's it's it's I hate being sincere on the show it's kind of amazing and that's how you find out Paul Feinbaum has hooves he's prancing around like the happiest llama. He's Bambi's mom and he's pissed. Yeah, thank you. I talked to Paul today, by the way. He's fine. I like that you say that like it was just a casual conversation. We did. Paul and I just talked. He was like trying to get me on some too many bowl games question. I was like, what do you want out of the Bahamas bowl? That ain't serious?

It'll never be serious. People take things too seriously. Eat some chicken. Go to the Bahamas. commit some tax fraud. Did he find out the presence of mind to say, what do you mean, you people? No, no, he didn't. He's making him economically insecure. Yeah, all that anxiety. So anxious.

This is the perfect place for a football game. I will brook no competition. There is one at the Rose Bowl at sunset for a championship game or a bowl game, and then there is everywhere else is fighting for, like, third. I don't even know what second is. Second's probably also the Rose Bowl, to be honest. But we... Flat irons at Colorado.

Yeah, flat irons are right there. So I've heard BYU, if you forget that you're in Provo, it is also really beautiful. That's a sin. But we have to deal with two teams that are in this bowl game. Do we? Yeah. Interest declining rapidly. Okay.

We almost made it. No, no, we're going to say some. good things because there's a couple good things to say about each of these teams there are proud of pit for making a rose bowl these these i will i'll say this if these are the two teams in college football right now that if you took away the team name and all of the history and sort of your conception of the fan base attached them i think we would all really really like both of these teams unabashed right and we'd be just thrilled for both of them i think that's true everybody loves the visuals of a red team blue team game and we have that today and you have to look up from the

players on the field and everything that comes with those players on the field is gross and dumb yeah yeah yeah but i want to talk about the players because this is actually if you forget because it's the only thing that's likable about this game so like here's the way i'm approaching it i like james franklin i like trace mcsoirley i like saquan barclay i like sam darnold i like yeah i love James Franklin. It's just like how I get along with him. Everybody thinks I'm weird. Yeah, you're the only human being on the planet who likes Jim Mora.

That's cool. Yeah, yeah. We all have our thing. James Franklin is mine, I guess. All right. He's nothing without Joe Moorhead, and you know it. We like Joe Moorhead, too. Yeah, but dude, didn't we say that about his now departed defensive coordinator?

Bob Schupe? We said, oh, man. Sorry, where did he go? Who's your coach that nobody else likes? my coach that nobody else likes oh tie willingham who's your pet monster oh yeah yeah yep yep yep uh my pet monster that nobody else likes i you know it's it's a real obvious answer i'm asking you so we can imagine them in a playoff are you going to say jim donan no no no no my answer for for coach that nobody else

likes dude i i love nick sabin and he's a mutant he's an absolute mutant but Dude, I know that he's not human, so that's where we start, right? It's friendly. It's like when it's the dog when you're like, hey, man, I love this dog. Can you take him on a leash? Oh, no. No, no, that's not happening. Is it good with other dogs?

Don't open that gate. Absolutely don't open that gate. Yeah, no, no, no. Like, I'm the guy who collects exotic pets that you really shouldn't have, and Nick Saben's definitely one of them. So I'm pretty fond of him. I find him and Bill Snyder, who are both admittedly, like, not, even close to abnormal on the like scale of normal abnormal people i like them both because they're

both just like wow man you know you get this pet and it only sleeps four hours a night it always wants to do stuff like yeah both of them um i will also say this i did not think we were going to get to the end of the 2016 season and say oh yeah clay helton and james franklin are totally fine like not on the hot seat at all everybody's feeling great about them going into 2017 that that kind of confuses me in ways that I have not

fully comprehended or come to terms with and well getting a little more time between this and the horrors that we saw visited upon Christian Hackenberg like knowing Christian Hakenberg is alive and out there and getting paid real money

and has most of his organs that's that's a little heartwarming. So there's a funny thing, this is very New York centric, but the Jets have been long eliminated from the AFC playoffs. And their week 17 game, everybody was sort of saying, well, you took Christian Hakenberg with a reasonably high draft pick. Are you going to play him?

Because he has not played at all this season, I believe. And they said, nope. Which is great. It's landed in a cotton wool situation, which is great. Yeah, Jets fans are all pissed. They're like, why did we draft this? guy if not to use him. And I just want to be like, to save him. You drafted him to save him. It's like buying Wilbur. You don't buy Wilbur and then say, when are we having bacon?

This is the, I mean, this is the exact setup that like we wanted for our dear sweet, our dear sweet boy, Christian Hakenberg, just stash him on a roster and forget about him. Yeah, going to this too, I mean, the players in this game, if you want to focus on the real joy of this game, if you cannot be Jason Kirk sitting there in the stands with A, let's see, you've got, Holly, the pregame meal, the pie place, what's that, pie and burger? Oh my God, yeah, pie. We'll fill Jason in on all this later on, but yeah, there's a cash-only place called pie and burger. Guess what they sell?

Mac and cheese. Yeah, you're doing terrific. Yeah, so you go with a belly full of pie and burger, and you go into the Rose Bowl, and guess who you get to watch? And I don't say this lightly. a joy, a legitimate joy to watch these players. And if I just said one of them, it would be enough. Adore Jackson, you get to watch him play football, okay? You get to watch Ronald Jones a second.

Carry the ball, one of the most violent runners in college football. You get to see Sequin Barclay, maybe the second most violent runner in college football, carrying the ball for Penn State. You can see Trace McSorley throw deep balls. He throws a gorgeous deep ball. You get to see Sam Darnold play. Sam Darnold, who is just so fast at processing. what happens on the field.

Like, I, there's, there's a lot of good things to watch in this game. Yeah, you get to see a Clancy Pendergast defense. That's fun. Bro, you get to see Joey Julius

streaking down the field. Les, we speak nothing of Juju Smith-Schuster. Oh, my God. J-J-J-Ju-Smiths'er. The stiff-armed king himself. Like, in terms of skill players,

oh my God, this may be the best, or at least, Yeah, this is the most compelling selection of skill players I can think of in one bowl game. I just want to point out something I've been thinking for a long time. Juju Smith-Schuster, I think, is the closest, I don't think it's possible for the Pac-12 to ever temperamentally match the SEC. J-Du-Smith-Schuster, in terms of exuberance that might maim a teammate is the closest thing that Pac-Fel was ever going to get to Matt Elam. Yeah, no, like a dude who to celebrate.

He is Matt Elam West. yeah to like might obliterate a fellow player in celebratory joy definitely that guy